Friday, February 29, 2008

Update for Carbon Sequestration

It's not quite like my idea to bury trees, but at the 2008 Annual Conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston Dr. Keith presented Ocean Iron Fertilization and Carbon Sequestration: Can the Oceans Save the Planet?

Language and Conflict: In the News

Reuter's translated "shoah" as Holocaust for this quote:

"The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said.

Shoah does mean holocaust, or disaster, but "the holocaust" is Ha-Shoah.

I have to admit, I'm not 100% on whether or not anyone in Israel uses Shoah for "the Holocaust" but it certainly resembles the difference between "civil war" and "the civil war"

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Texas/Mexico Border Wall Skipping Property of the Rich

Haroldson Lafayette Hunt is the guy who presaged the oil-connected, plutocratic Republican Party that exists now. Eisenhower said of this movement, in a letter to his brother in 1952

Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.

Today, Hunt's rich inheritor descendants will not have the wall go through their property, but it will go right up to their land. Thanks to Melissa del Bosque of the Texas Observer for her article on the plutocratic pandering in building the border fence. She also discusses the same thing on Democracy Now! tonight.

Just for fun, some people are being compensated at the absurd rate of $50/acre.

How Come I Didn't Know?

How come I didn't know the CIA used a car bomb in 1983 to assassinate a Lebanese cleric, named Fadlallah, and the resulting explosion killed 81 bystanders and injured 200 more?

You've undoubtedly read about the recent death of Imad Mugniyeh. Mugniyeh was definitely radicalized by this event.

The CIA analysts weren't sure at all that Fadlallah was behind the recent bombings of the barracks of the Marine Corps and French forces in Beirut. Luckily a guy named Gates appears to have suppressed that information, so the bombing went ahead. Gates is now Secretary of Defense. We have a mother fucking car bomber for Secretary of Defense.

A Movie I Want To See: Jesus Comes Back

Jesus comes back. He travels to Los Angeles. Why, you ask? To make a movie, of course. Ideally the year would be 2026, and little would be different than today.

There's a trick, sometimes people look at him funny. Sometimes when he leaves the frame (of the movie, not the movie-in-the-movie) he looks odd. In fact, he looks blurred.

He does, however, perform miracles. That's the pitch, "I do miracles" and the Hollywood bosses all want to bid, but Jesus, as lots of people expected, isn't interested in the cash payouts.

So, he feeds the entire studio lot, thousands of people, with the sandwiches and coffee from a single pushcart. And this miracle isn't even filmed for the movie he wants to make (although hand-held cameras abound).

Of course there are skeptics. The miracles shut most people up, but a few are convinced its a trick.

Perhaps on a beach in Florida, someone hears about this, and doubts it, and someone says "Prove it" and this someone thinks they will. And goes out to do said.

Said person purchases whole catalogs of detection devices, loads them in a trunk of car, and drives to Los Angeles, picking up compatriots along the road. Real scientists are shooed away by the studio, knowing a proved fraud would sink their imminent and record breaking profits. The truth can come later.

Day after day, walking in different detectors from the trunk and walking near the Jesus figure, the skeptic tries to puzzle it out. He notices the blur quickly, but can't tell anyone but his compatriots, since he needs continued access.

He is going crazy, so he stabs the Jesus figure, Jesus bleeds, the guy is arrested, the focus turns to the cop. The cop, you see, is a bit of a skeptic himself. On the weapon is both the blood of Jesus, which he now has an opportunity to study, and a chip of bone. Jesus asks for the weapon, and gets it in his hand, but then the cops take it.

We follow the scalpel to the lab, we see the police officer carry it to the technician, who puts it under the microscope. "Looks normal to me, although I'd have to do more tests to be sure," says the technician. Then the technician notices the bone chip. Under the microscope it doesn't look like bone, it looks like metal with a bone-like covering. They leave the room, to get others, when they get back the bone is just bone.

Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, the viewer is launched from Earth, arcing up and over, slingshotting to the moon, to the far side of the moon, to the spaceship. The spaceship is in contact with the Jesus. The aliens agree that the technician should be killed. They dematerialize part of his brake line while he's driving.

The cop is quite afraid. The cop is from Los Angeles, and knows some people in the studio. A gaffer for laughs? A best boy for the worst? Someone. The signal to the moon is detected. The alien now is pretending to be alive (its a robot) and that he was the original Jesus, too. That works for a while, too. The studio executives and the preachers both really want to believe, not to mention the now millions of people who have put their faith in this thing.

Perry Mason style, for lack of a better idea, the Earthlings learn that faking to be the reborn religious figures of planets is the best way to conquer them. Maybe the robot, shielded from its space controllers, has no preferences, and simply spills the beans once asked.

The aliens' plan was simply to use us as cheap labor, manufacturing mostly. Poverty was going to be the new way, the new Jesus would never die, and no one would be in a position to question the new production methods, or where the product ended up going.

In the end the aliens leave, and the Earthlings look up, knowing both that they are not alone, and targets for exploitation.

The discovery of the robot nature of the Jesus robot, maybe it should have something to do with his heart.

A New Theory: America Responsible for Sectarian Strife in Iraq

America is responsible for the current sectarian divisions in Iraq, by virtue of its own ignorance.

I think we agree that the problem is mostly a struggle over the reigns of power in a new Iraq. There are billions of dollars and plenty of patronage on the line.

I think we agree that most Americans knew very little about Iraq before 2003, and "learned" that some were Shia, some Sunni, and some Kurds. Of course, that's not really accurate, since the Kurds are generally Sunni, but it is pretty simple and let's people think they've learned things. Some of the more interested learned about the Turkomen, Christian and other groups that don't fall into one of the three main categories.

The news media repeated this categorization ad nauseum. Perhaps they were trying to prove that they had learned something about the Iraqi people we now ruled.

Government officials were, at least as far as I remember, slightly more likely to remind people of the Turkomen and Iraqi Christian community, but that is just my memory.

What the top echelons of the Executive Branch under the painfully retarded President Bush decided was to split power among the previously mentioned groups. For example, there would be two vice Presidents, so the President and 2 VPs could each represent one of the three groups.

Now, imagine you are an Iraqi politician. You've got to build support. You've got to form a coalition of like-minded Iraqis to achieve what you all think is justice, a fair deal and a promising future for Iraq. One thing you know is that the Americans are handing out power based on their own ideas on the divisions of Iraq. You would have no more rational strategy than to gain a large following in one group. For example, if you were a Kurd but you had a mostly Arab Shia following, the Americans couldn't give you a Kurd seat, since you don't seem to represent the Kurds, and they can't give you the Shia seat, since you aren't Shia.

NY Times Critique; Pandering to Ford

Today there is a story on Ford Motor Company's attempt to reduce the number of employees via buyouts (NY Times).

Problems:

Repeated mentions of generosity of offer

No mention of Ford expanding outside America. I'm not even sure they are, but surely its the most logical question

No mention of comparisons with Toyota. Although the article mentions the pressure is from Toyota, and Ford hopes to hire lower wage workers, no mention of any other auto manufacturer wages was mentioned.

I give this article one smear for sounding like a Ford Press Release, and two smears for skipping the most basic of follow up questions. That's three more smears on the reputation of the NY Times.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Keep Our Honor Clean

I wonder how many Marines know that, as a reprisal for the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the CIA tried to assassinate a cleric named Fadlallah. Although the assassination attempt failed, it killed 80 local innocents, and wounded 200 more. The weapon? The CIA tried to kill Fadlallah with a car bomb.

There is a small glitch, though. The CIA wasn't really sure that Fadlallah was the right guy to target. CIA analysts felt they were being led to Fadlallah by Israel and the KSA. The wisdom of the analysts was quashed by a guy named Gates, now Secretary of Defense.

A Bit of Hypocrisy from Ralph Nader

Are polls a valid way for politicians to make decisions? That's a debate for another time. But if you do cite a poll, you shouldn't ignore similar polls, but that's what Ralph Nader wants us to do.

On Meet the Press, Ralh Nader (transcript) announced he's running yet again for President. One argument he used, to provide "context" was "80 percent [of the electorate] would consider voting for a independent this year." But what percentage would vote for Ralph Nader? Nader is polling around four percent against Hillary and Rudy (a few months old). Do you think he'd do better against Obama and McCain?

Trying to run third party with our electoral system proves Ralph Nader is just stupid. Decades ago he was great. He has never won a state, and for some unknown reason thinks he is too good for the US Senate.

Obama said it well when he said that eight years ago Nader said there was no difference between Bush and Gore. Further proof that Nader is stupid.
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Friday, February 22, 2008

Linguistic Bias In Foreign Reporting

Isn't that where it always shows up? The Shorenstein Center in DC brought in a Harvard academic, just returned from Pakistan, to explain what was going on.

First thing is that no party won the absolute majority required to govern, but it isn't entirely clear where the coalition will come from.

The academic said that everyone she talked to would ask where she was from ("International Democracy?") and then, when pressing and finding out she was American, reacted in a positive way. I'm guessing this conversation only happened with English speakers, and that's a serious bias. But past that, everyone in Pakistani politics knows where the extranational butter for their bread is coming from.
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Thursday, February 21, 2008

Riots in Belgrade

The Serbian government organized the protests (according to Russia Today), and it might have been a bit careless, considering how easy it would be for anyone to agitate from their to the type of violence we've seen.

I'm enjoying watching Russia Today, a 24 hour English language news station from the Russian perspective. They don't spend nearly so much time interviewing people like Richard Holbrooke or Wesley Clark, Clinton era US government officials who were involved in the 1999 bombing of Serbia (and who have nothing to add about the current state of affairs).

And I'm very unhappy with the footage. It needs to have a timestamp, since that would help the interested citizen gauge whether things were getting better or worse. The RT journalist in the area is saying things are calming down, and also saying that English speaking journalists are definitely being targetted.

UPDATE: Dan Selwer, former US Ambassador to Bosnia, repeatedly associates the current Serb government with that of Milosevic, although he does once mention that the current Serb government isn't using violence. That's a big fucking difference, if you ask me.
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008

DHS is CIA

The CIA was set up, in part, and evolved into, in part, a way to funnel information, regardless of the party in charge, to the Democrats.

DHS is the same, in reverse. Chertoff is bragging that the #2 and #3 slots in most areas are career civil servants.
It is too easy to imagine that most of these are loyal Bushies.
There is no doubt that a large number of previous Bush appointments have been far more loyal to him than to the United States of America.
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Pentagon Spokesperson Easy-to-Uncover Deceit

Today he said that UN Resolution 1244 won't be affected by the independence declaration of Kosovo.

4. Confirms that after the withdrawal an agreed number of Yugoslav and Serb military and police personnel will be permitted to return to Kosovo to perform the functions in accordance with annex 2;

Doesn't seem that way to me.

Also seems like the Albanian, Macedonian and Croatian Defense Ministers were in Washington this week, and continue to be so, for "Adriatic Charter Defense Ministerial meetings". Because, you fucking know, America is now on the Adriatic.

For those less geographically inclined, Macedonia is not on the Adriatic either, but Macedonia (and Albania) are adjacent to newly independent Kosovo.

I'm sure Leninology has some of the Russian perspective covered, he usually does.
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Monday, February 18, 2008

Gawker Finds Hot Political Story

Gawker.com, which delves into political posts every day in and amongst their standard fare, put me onto this, wikileaks.org has been removed from US DNS servers because of a court decision by a US judge. Sure, that could happen, but listen to some of the details:

The [DNS removal] order was written by Cayman Island's Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003.
...
The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.
...
In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active.
...
Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney's in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice "by email" prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Political News And Stategerizing

Maryland, a very early state having Congressional primaries this cycle, saw losses for two incumbents. On the Democrat side, a war-critic beat a war-supporter-turned-critic. On the Republican side, a 20 year veteran was beaten for being a war-supporter-turned-critic by a war-supporter. Good news for the Democrats, because it looks like the Republican-held district leans Democrat, a hardcore Republican will alienate this district and bring it Dem.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Reality v. Ted Olson, the Obliteration

Ted Olson wrote a piece today and the newly Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal published it with the headline "Clinton v. Obama, the Lawsuit." The article is a masturbatory fantasy which pre-hoc justifies the world's shittiest USSC opinion, Bush v. Gore by hypothesizing:
a) Clinton will use the courts to get the Florida and Michigan delegates seated.
b) The courts will likely overrule the decisions of the private entity, the Democratic Party.
c) The Florida legislature will get involved (with what standing? Bah!)
d) Democratic lawyers will have as little self respect as the Bush team (note: David Boies, who won Bush v. Gore, is a Democrat) and bloody f*cking citeBush v. Gore in order to win the case.

The decision will be made by a committee of the 400+ members of the Democratic National Committee. Howard Dean is the Chair of that body as a whole, but has no say over the rulings of the Committee.

Clinton might file a lawsuit, although it is hard to imagine, but it wouldn't be against Obama. What does Obama have to do with any of this? It's a lame attempt to sully the WSJ with untethered (to reality) mudslinging. Well, fair is fair, lapdog sociopath Ted Olson!.
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NOOOOOOOO!

The Pentagon is going to request the DEATH PENALTY for a bunch of guys whose whole schtick is martyrdom! This morning it was reported on CNN that the Pentagon will be requesting the death penalty for, among others, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Since I suspect they will be requesting this from others in the executive branch, there is a good chance they will get what they want.

This must be stopped!

I'm calling the White House comment line: 202-456-1111. What I'm going to say is

I understand the Pentagon is requesting the death penalty for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other people for 9/11.
These people want to be martyred.Don't play into their hands.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Zac Posen, Fall 2008

The show started with the strange message that women's legs were more important than their clothes. Was there some other message I should have gotten from all those colored tights?

It progressed into some very good work, with a few very fine ensembles coming along.

Creativity is, and is not, a fountain. Letting the right amount of it out, and not becoming satisified, is a great challenge. Let's hope he bottles some more up for next season.
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Carmen Marc Valvo, Fall 2008

Five of thirty, what do you say when five pieces of a collection are quite nice (the mostly green dress with the liberty cut, the two bustier with puffier pants, one cocktail dress and the look with the white furry peacoat) but the rest are completely skippable?

Friday, February 08, 2008

Better than Capitalism or Communism

Great minds, like Robert M Hutchins, thought that Capitalism and Communism were the two choices a person could make when considering economic theories. Many people consider the two to be polar opposites. George William Frederick Hegel's main schtick was about opposites. He called them "hypothesis" and "antithesis." When a hypothesis and antithesis exists, he said, a "synthesis" could be derived.

I'm not trying to say I have synthesized communism and capitalism. I'm just saying I have something altogether better.
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Christians used to think Tradition was a crime!

Well, I'm just being sneaky. Tradition once meant something else. Traditors was the label applied to people who did what the Romans asked during the persecution of christians by Diocletian. They were burning the bible, et cetera, and some Bishops just handed over the books to be burnt. These "Traditors" were guilty of "tradition."
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Thursday, February 07, 2008

The Republicans Are International Anarchists

Sure, we've all known that this "unilaterialism" and pre-emptive war stuff was A MONUMENTALLY BAD IDEA (at least in this instance) but I want to "frame" the discussion by labeling Republican actions accurately, they are International Anarchists.
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Cheney Flubs Waterboarding Defense

His prepared notes said he was "damned. Right, and I'd do it again."
It came out, possibly as a result of too much time spent with Bush, that he was "damn right, and I'd do it again.

For clarification, we go to Cheney Special Reporter Dick Flick, Dick?

Dick Flick: That's right, Josh. For years now, President Cheney ...
Josh: Did you say "President" Cheney?
Dick Flick: That's right, Josh, he hates it when I say that. Anyway, for years now, Dick Cheney has known he was damned to an eternity of holy hellfire, and no amount of faith or prayer could save him. With this in mind, torture isn't something that concerned him, as he meant to say, he's "damned." Damned for all he time, surely.
Josh: Thanks Dick, thank you very much.
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Ralph Peters, Colonel, early Iraq War Booster

And yet, I want to talk to this guy. There are a lot of problems here, Nagorno-Karabakh, excessive splitting of Saudi Arabia (why are the holy sites separate?), I'm not clear why Afghanistan, which is a big hodge podge, "gets" Pashtun Pakistan rather than having it be independent. I do like "Free" Kurdistan and Balochistan. Anyway, that picture of Iraq sure is interesting. Baghdad as an independent city? Yikes, that has lots of opportunities for badness (no access to rest of world). I also don't see the need to separate Sunni and Shia Iraq for long term stability. Why would Kuwait stay separate? The only reason it exists like that is the British captured just that much of the region, for a while. Last I looked, the Kurds really shouldn't get everything up to Georgia, but I could be wrong.
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Voting Guide

All the polls seem to show that Barack Obama has a 1-3% better chance of beating McCain than Hillary Clinton, and the most liberal member of the Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens, will be retiring. If he was replaced by a conservative, not to mention a foolishly young conservative like Alito or Roberts, America is pretty well doomed.
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Sister-in-Law is a strange term, isn't it?

Can the law make someone my sister? If it can, can it make a random stranger my sister? Can it turn a man into my sister? Will the religious wrong try to pass a constitutional amendment to prevent two men from becoming each other's sisters-in-law?

Thanks for reading this blog, you know we tackle the tough issues that no one is talking about. Staying ahead of the curve, waaaaay ahead of the curve, is what it is all about.
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Sunday, February 03, 2008

Which Party Are We?

I like Brian Lamb, but he gets a bit repetitive when he always asks(asked) his interviewees whether American Revolutionary X would today be a Democrat or a Republican.

The society of active Republican lawyers is called the Federalists, and the 1800s party Democratic-Republicans, the Federalist's rivals, have been in existence ever since and are now called the Democrats. Should be pretty easy, right?

I think everyone has it backwards. I think the Democrats are clearly the Federalists, while the Republicans are just as clearly the Democratic-Republicans.

The main issue is size and scope of government. If the Congress is any indicator, and VoteView any guide, then the Democrats are the party of an expanded Federal government, while the Republicans represent limited government and stronger states. Voteview says well over 90% of all votes in Congress are along this one dimensional axis. Ron Paul, the libertarian, is quite predictable. If it involves the Federal government doing something, he says no. He was against Civil Rights, because it involved the government doing something. He is against OAS/DI (Social Security) because it involves the federal government doing something. John Conyers is at the other end of the current Congress.

This nicely matches the Federalist/Democratic-Republican split in 1800. Washington was known to have laughed at the idea of sovereign states, and certainly Hamilton was big into making all debt and banking issues into national ones. So, to the contrary of pretty much all the authors I heard Brian Lamb interview, I'd say George Washington would be a Democrat, and Thomas Jefferson a Republican.
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Friday, February 01, 2008

Huckabee on Economics

When Huckabee talks about social issues, or, more specifically, when he talked about running a positive campaign, out of politeness, I will give him an ear, plus, he is easy to listen to.

He talked at the Commonwealth Club on Thursday and, on tax issues, he is sadly ignorant. I wonder where he knows people that lose half their paychecks before they get it. His idea is a national sales tax, which he calls a "fair tax", but which hits the poor much harder than the rich. How Christian of him! It's just what Jesus would do.
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